The Queen Is Dead

Although it didn’t hit our shores until June 23, today marks the 28th anniversary of the release of the album which many critics – and if we’d taken the time to do the math, we’d probably be safe in saying most critics – still view as the best full-length studio effort ever offered by the Smiths.

The Queen is Dead was the third proper album by the Smiths (Hatful of Hollow doesn’t count, as it was a compilation), and while its chart placement was ultimately a notch lower than its predecessor, 1985’s Meat is Murder, which was the band’s only album to top the UK charts, it’s sold more copies than any of the band’s other studio albums and, as a result, is their only studio album to have gone platinum, an honor which could well be tied to New Musical Express having put it at the top of their 2013 list of the Greatest Albums of All Time.

There is clearly a light that never goes out... The Smiths' THE QUEEN IS DEAD reigns in the most recently updated list of the NME's Top Albums Of All Time. The 1986 release beat out some stiff competition from The Beatles, David Bowie, Pulp, The Stone Roses, and Pixies.